No one learned to handle a knife without a few scars. But the worst scars Eos bore weren’t from a knife. They were from the gentlest thing she ever carried.

  Thin white lines ran down her right arm. Places where a little girl had dug her nails in, latched on and refused to let go. Her hands had been perpetually warm. They were almost always sticky with nectar, and smelled of the citrus she’d squirrel away into her round cheeks.

  But the smell of citrus was long gone. All that clung onto Eos were the scratches that had bled and healed quicker than she wanted them to. And even now, the years had turned their marks almost imperceptible. If that little girl had been stronger, the scars might have been wider. Eos might have kept more of her near.

  But she hadn’t been that strong. After all, she’d only been thirteen. And she had been small, for thirteen. In another universe, Eos could have wrapped her whole body around that little girl and kept her snug and safe.

  But there was no other universe. There was just this one, where she could only reach another little girl — who was plummeting through the air, limbs flailing, lungs yelling — and wrap her arms tight and fast around her small body.

  Iris smelled like scented water. Eos ate a mouthful of her braid and they fell down, down, down.

  There wasn’t anything but nausea and blurs of darkness, and then the wibbly-wobbly feeling of her back hitting a jelly wall. The heavyweight ram that was Iris landed on top of— shoving every internal organ out of the way — and Eos choked on her own spit.

  White noise, blistered ash. She was right back where she started.

  Iris unceremoniously rolled off her body. Finally — the ability to breathe. At least for now. The bubble was holding, but did barely anything for the heat that radiated off the walls.

  “Great! Just great!”

  “Shh, shhh-“

  “Don’t tell me to shh-“

  Eos clapped a hand over her mouth. “Unless you want to run out of oxygen, bug, I suggest you stop screaming.”

  Naturally, Iris screamed into her palm. Loudly. All the hot air pressed and swelled against Eos’s skin and Eos could feel wet teeth open its maw against her palm— oh stars, go figure. Eos snatched her hand back before she could be bitten. This wasn’t going to work. This game wasn’t fun anymore — it was one thing when she had her bravado and an enemy in hand and the memories had just been experience, guiding her to what she should have done.

  But now here was a child. Now the memories weren’t experience they were only feelings. The panic and the flames were dredging up memories and churning her stomach in a way that made Eos dizzy with dread. This was just like that night, except now there was no open sky. Just like that night with that little girl who was in her arms, until she wasn’t.

  Focus. Eos could dimly think of Anesidora’s guiding hand on her back. You’ve done this before.

  The feeling were feelings. The memories were experience. This was just like home. Eos’s mind wove around the notion and held fast. Fire was familiar to her, and so was panic, and so was screaming.

  Iris was screaming. She was throwing up bubble after bubble inside their shell, shrinking their space as the fire grew closer and closer. The outer bubble popped — and the sound was like a gunshot, the both of them flinching.

  No more. Eos set her shuddering aside and knelt down. Blood was coursing right down to her fingertips, but she set her hands on Iris’s shoulders and steadied her. The memories were going to guide her right to what she should have done.

  “Listen, listen. Iris. Breathe.”

  “What?” Iris said, breath ragged. She must have put everything into her screaming, but still mustered a glare. “Our bubble’s gonna pop, and we’re gonna burn to death and you’re just sitting around!”

  “We will not burn to death.” Eos put as much authority, as much feeling as she could into the words. “We will survive this, and you will see your mother again. Now - tell me. What can your bubbles do? They’ve protected us so far.”

  “They — they’re no good if it’s too dry!” Iris said, voice cracking. The firelight danced tauntingly in her scared, dark eyes.

  “What can they do?” Eos said. She was losing Iris’s gaze to the blazing room. She reached for her cloak and wrapped it around Iris’s round shoulders. “Bug, look at me. You see this?”

  She ran the cloak against Iris’s shoulder, wrapping it snug around body. A thousand soft, minuscule scales ran in a shimmering river across her dark skin. Eos could see Iris jump — in the sea of raging fire, it was cool to the touch.

  “This is the weaving of Naguya Tan,” Eos said. “Stitched from a thousand threads of dragonscale. Do you know what dragons are? Beautiful beasts, with mastery of fire.”

  Eos unclasped the cloak from her throat, letting the silver chain rattle against itself. As she refastened it around Iris’s shoulders it struck her — it was too big. But it would have to do. Eos leveled her gaze with Iris, and gave her the brightest smile she could.

  “Fire can’t burn this any more than we could name the sun.”

  As the words fell from her lips, Eos felt something roll into her palm. Eos opened her hand. Rhododactylos. Her small pink bead had reappeared in her hand. Her Namesake.

  Rhododactylos, it told her, your power to give and take.

  Iris took the cloak in her fist. She held it like a child would hold a blanket — but then steeled herself and stuffed the edges into her belt.

  “You’re the stupidest pirate I’ve ever met,” Iris decided.

  Eos grinned, and stuffed her Namesake into her pocket. “I could introduce you to a few more.”

  Iris looked around, gripping her staff. “My bubbles are magic,” she said — her tone as if she were explaining it to someone that hadn’t yet been potty trained — “But they’re made from real stuff. They’ll pop if they’re, like, on fire. But um — they can stop bullets, and knives, and they fly and stuff.”

  “Fly and stuff,” Eos mused. She’d have to turn those confusing, seemingly contradictory notions of strength and lightness over as they went.

  The wood in the room was nearly spent. The new walls growing in were peeling in place. The fire had warped the repairs into curling, cancerous growths that twisted the rooms in terrible, macabre shapes. In between the bursts of the inferno, the unfurled limbs looked almost like people.

  Each branch threw scattering of sparks across the floor, which groaned and cried under their feet. Stars — if the Leviathan were responsible, their ship would have a metal-bellied sheath that would catch them if the fire burnt through.

  Their monster of a despoina probably wouldn’t have cared.

  “Can you lift us?” Eos said, holding Iris’s shoulder. Iris gulped but nodded, waving her staff. Eos could hear her faintly over the roar of the flames as she hummed and whistled to herself anxiously.

  Their bubble within a bubble swept over a shadow. The charred remains of her bag was barely visible in the heat. Eos had woven that bag herself from the cheapest fiber she could coax to comply. She tried not to mourn the loss, but it struck her all the same.

  “The fire should snuff out any minute now,” she said instead, pushing the sticky feeling in her throat out of the way. “The Leviathan has a fireseal. It’ll hold until this room is snuffed.”

  So why hadn’t it yet?

  At least Iris was nodding at her words. Eos’s mind raced. For a girl from the planet that mastered fire, she was failing to come up with any explanation.

  It wasn’t as though the fire itself was magical, was it? Magical creatures who could spark a fire from nothing were not all that uncommon. But the flames they held were the same as any made by tinder and timber. It needed fuel, it needed oxygen….

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Smoke swirled across their bubble. Eos’s eyes widened.

  “Can you direct our motion?” Eos asked, urgently tugging at Iris’s shoulder. She pointed. “That way.”

  Iris followed her finger, and Eos watched her leer back. “You mean straight through the fire? The one that will pop any bubble? I won’t be able to make another one!”

  “There must be something letting air flow in,” Eos said. “A way out!”

  “You saw one?”

  No, Eos thought, but honesty wasn’t going to be all that helpful right now.

  “I was badly injured by the making of one.” There, that was better. “The way the fire came in is the same way we will go out.”

  Iris opened her mouth to protest, but Eos grabbed fast to her hands. Eos ran her calloused fingers over Iris’s knuckles and felt that they were calloused, too.

  “You have the cloak,” Eos said. “If anything happens, you’ll be alright. Move sternward and hug the hull. You’ll find it.”

  “And you’re just going to —“

  A rafter snapped and swung down, chopping through the air like an axe seeking a log. The damn thing clipped a hair’s breadth from them and send a shockwave through the air, sending them spinning up and down, left and right. Iris’s nose slammed into her shoulder. Eos yelped as her staff bit right into her seared arm.

  They tumbled upwards. Twisted wood draped down from the ceiling — faulty the repair system turning the smooth rafters into needlelike projections. Not good wasn’t even close an adequate description, but it was all Eos could think of as she jumped and threw her entire body weight down to avoid being impaled.

  The floor rushed up at them — nightmarish hellfire below, frightening teeth above — and Iris screamed, a high, impossible whistling shriek that seemed to stop the entire bubble dead in its tracks.

  They hovered. Eos stared at Iris.

  “We’re alive,” Eos started, trying for a smile. “And it seems we travel rather well, so—“

  “I don’t know where we are!” Iris yelped. “We can’t even go to your death trap!”

  “Shh, shh,” Eos said. The air under her palms was growing unbearable. Sweat dripped into her eyes. It was already drenching down her arms, soaking into her gloves. At least her bracers were heat resistant.

  Eos paused. Her bracers. Eos felt the unusual lightness in them. Her knives were still missing.

  “Iris,” she said. “You said your bubble was resistant to knives, no?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  Eos reached her arms out. She imagined the shape of her knives. Single-edged, curved, silvery in the firelight. The curved ring where the blade met the hilt, letting air whistle through like wind between teeth. She beckoned. Get over here.

  And through the impossible landscape, Eos could hear the cheerful whistling of her knives spinning through the air. They carved a straight path through the flames, spinning blade-over-hilt, spinning right at the two of them.

  “Oh, holy fu-“ Iris slipped and fell into her bubble, right as Eos released the pull, letting the knives clatter to the unseen ground below.

  “Good!” Eos said. “Those fell exactly where we dropped in. If they came from that direction — then that’s starboard, that’s port, and we need to go—“ Eos pointed. “That way.”

  Iris stood and punched her.

  “Ow!”

  “You were gonna kill us!”

  “I thought you said the bubbles were knife resistant?”

  “Not magic knife resistant, dummy!”

  “Ah. Good to know.”

  Iris stood, holding her staff. Eos could see the sweat soaking her forehead. “You’re sure about where we’re going?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Eos said.

  “And you can’t send your knives forward to-“ Iris pointed towards their destination, making some vague chopping motions and whoosh whoosh noises.

  “I’m not sure what that is,” Eos said, “but definitely not, bug, they’re just Khenium. They can find their way towards me, but if I want them to go far from me, I need to throw them myself.”

  “Aw, ffff - fine,” Iris said. She gripped her staff in front of her. “Stand back.”

  There wasn’t a lot of room in the bubble to begin with, but Eos did her best, squishing her body as far back into bubble as possible. She watched Iris plant her feet down, furrow her sweaty brow, and grip her staff. It glinted in the firelight. The staff was beautifully made — a balanced golden rod topped with a hoop, the simple circle decorated by a set of golden wings. Soapy liquid perpetually glistened in the hoop. The source of her bubbles. And the source of their freedom, Eos hoped.

  Iris started to sing.

  Maybe it was ritual, or maybe it was showing off. Eos didn’t know. The air in the bubble was growing thin and hot. But her voice was beautiful. Eos let her knees give out and slid to the bottom of the bubble, feeling the music soak into the walls of the bubble as it soared over the dying room.

  A sharp pop. There goes their outer bubble - Eos braced herself as their flight stopped midair. Iris’s voice squeaked out in surprise and her staff jerked up as she hugged it close to her chest. Eos sprung to her feet as the temperature rocketed up a dozen degrees.

  “Don’t stop now,” Eos panted, as encouragingly as she could muster. Her hand touched Iris’s back. As steady as Iris looked in the bubble, Eos could feel tension in her shoulders and the uncertainty in her breath. Eos steadied her. “You’re doing beautifully. Keep going.”

  It was better left unsaid that stopping over the hottest part of the fire was a death sentence. The scattering of light made the bubble look like molten lava.

  “I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” Iris said. Eos couldn’t see Iris’s expression, but she could feel Iris trembling under her hand. Iris chirped and trilled softly under her breath, and the bubble started to move again - a little, then faster and faster, careening through the air as Iris directed with her staff. Eos instinctively ducked as they swerved past one twisted obstacle after another: a pillaged vanity, a collapsed chandelier, a pyre that was once sheafs of wheat. And in all that darkness — a shred of sunlight.

  “There!” Eos shouted. Eos could feel the bubble jerk and lock onto a route dead-ahead. The whole world stretched as acceleration took over, the bubble going from a light hover to a bullet in a chamber. “The exit — don’t overshoot the atmosphere!”

  “I’m trying!” Iris shrieked. “I’m not doing this!”

  The bubble wasn’t stopping. Searing heat behind her — radiating heat, enough hot air rushing maddeningly out towards the exit that must be faster than Iris could control. The jagged edges of their exit looked like a yawning maw, teeth ready to shred the last bit of protection from them. A needle needed to be threaded, or else bubble was going to pop and momentum was going to deliver them from hellfire to the cold void of space.

  “Just get us through the exit!” Eos shouted. “I’ll redirect us.”

  “But you don’t know how to-“

  “Focus!”

  Iris was bristling, but she turned back, resting her staff right against the wall. Turbulence gave way to clarity. Focus. Eos reached out. She felt the handle of her knives in her mind. Reckless. They were spinning, they were singing, they were turning blade-over-hilt towards her. Eos focused hard on the memory of their weight, how they felt in her hands. She’d woven decorative strips of fabric for the grips. They’d been beautiful. Eos prayed to Elpis — let them not have all turned to ash.

  The bubble breached the hull. Iris screamed. Eos jumped. She watched for the silver in the smoke like a star in the sky. There! Eos dropped the pull — watched her knives plummet — and then dropped to her knees in the bubble, pressed her hands to the floor and yanked.

  Up spun the knives. Eos could see nothing but them, and their handles. Her beautiful, charred, perfect handles that struck the bubble’s floor with enough force to send them flying upwards like a bird catching the wind.

  “Yes!” Eos cried, watching her knives strain and push, and the second they were over the edge of the railing, spun her wrist from the floor and watched her knives twirled and cut them clean free.

  Eos laughed — her body struck the deck with enough force to force the air from her lungs but it came out laughing, her arms wrapped around Iris. Her skin was hot to the touch and rippled with goosebumps in the cold smoke air, and all that meant she was alive, alive, alive. Eos buried her face in Iris’s hair. Redemption never felt so warm.

  Eos sprang to her feet. “Hah!” she wheezed, unclasping her cloak from Iris, shaking it out. Soot sloughed off in a wave. Eos refastened the cloak around her own shoulders, feeling the dragonscale settle on her shoulder like a hug for a job well done. She dug into her pocket. Her Namesake slipped back onto the chain like it had awaited a return to its throne.

  Eos turned and ruffled Iris’s hair. “How’s that for living, bug?”

  Iris shook her head. Ash spilling from her hair, but she was completely heedless as she started jumping up and down. “You’re crazy! You have to teach me! How did you do that?”

  “A lot of Khenium practice — and the smiling favor of my goddess, I’d think,” Eos said. “C’mon. Let’s get you home before I have to call for any more favors.”

  “Not so fast.”

  A voice like sea salt and gravel.

  Eos whipped around. A dozen grim faces slowly emerged from the smoke. Eos could see their armaments. All much like she remembered. Clubs, cutlasses, pistols. Old, but repairable. Reliable. Predictable.

  The crew of the Leviathan faced them once more.

  “I don’t suppose saying I have a favor from Yatpan will help me now any more than it had?” Eos said.

  “Your favor is us listening to your last words.”

  They best be good, then. Eos stuck her arm out, gently nudging Iris back from where she was brandishing her staff again.

  “My good men of the Leviathan,” Eos said bowing low to them. “My name is Eos Rhododactylos. I am quartermaster to Captain Anesidora of the Lucifer, and I came as a messenger.” She straightens.

  “I have a message for your Captain Yammu — and I have one for the Chance as well.” She wrapped an arm around Iris. Iris, for her part, had her arms crossed and was glaring as hard as she could at the crew members.

  Eos could see that behind the rough-voiced man was another man, pushing his way through. Yatpan. He stared at her, lips set in a grim line. Ah. Whoever Eos was speaking to wasn’t easily bargained with.

  She turned her attention back to him.

  “May I know your name?”

  “You speak to Keret. Quartermaster of the Leviathan.” His voice was more a growl than anything. Eos could feel the weight of his name in the air — and the unhappiness in his title.

  “From one quartermaster to another — I know how hard the burden is, to supply for your crew. And more than the crew, to supply for a whole fleet. I have no quarrel with the Leviathan. Quite the opposite. I bring news of a softer place to land. A map, and a charter.”

  From her belt, Eos produced a metal canister, sealed with a metal stamp. Thank Elpis it had not melted in the fire. Eos ran her thumb over the seal. A dragon, curled around itself. The mark of Naguya Tan.

  Her fingers held it tight, like a comfort, betrayed by the words coming out of her mouth. The closest thing she had to home in months, and she had to give it up?

  Yes, yes. She had to give it up to get it all back.

  “And if we kill you and take it for ourselves?” Keret asked.

  “I’d like to see you try!” Iris snapped. Eos nudged her back.

  “I suppose we’ll be seeing each other in the afterlife shortly,” Eos said. “You have a fire in your supply room. I’ve just come through it. It’s pushed your fire measures to the limit. It was caused by the cannonfire of your Inner Ring, which has left a hole feeding it air. And on top of that — you have us pests to deal with. One harmless thief, and a singular but troublesome invader. With time, you could subdue us. But if you capture us and leave the fire be, none of you will make it back to your fleet, or your Despoina. You’ll captured by your target — or stranded in space. And if you do manage to get back to the fleet — I know Athirat Despoina. She won’t take kindly to this, will she?”

  The energy shifted. The crews’ jaws were set. Eos held the canister out.

  Eos’s voice softened. “I may be a thief and an alley rat, but I don’t take pleasure in death. Let me take this lost child home. Let yourselves tend to your fire. And let me deliver this news to your Captain, so you may go in peace and live. I promise I will do this, on the pain of tarnish of my name.”

  Keret’s eyes turned to Yatpan, accusatory but as if to ask for a reason for execution. Yatpan licked his dry lips.

  “She is a thief,” Yatpan said. “But not a good one. She made out with nothing. And… she speaks truth. The Chance fired on us. She saved my life. And our stores burn — it’s not yet under control.”

  Truth falling out like teeth from his mouth. It looked painful for him. Eos could see a vein bulge in his neck like he was tensed for someone to strike him. But he spoke the truth regardless. Something warm and soft settled in Eos’s chest, something like a kindling fire. Eos closed her eyes — just for a moment — imagined blowing on it gently to let the flame grow, imagined blowing on it like sending a wish. Eos prayed.

  If Elpis couldn’t help them, then — at least she could hear this. That someone else could. That someone else chose to.

  Keret’s eye twitched. Below them, the sounds of battle were still ongoing. Eos could imagine the turmoil in his mind, hold it as surely as she held the scroll. His eyes never left her. There was a calculation that was being made, that Eos could read in his eyes. What else do I have left to lose?

  “….Danel, take six men to the water stores. The rest of you, find panels and rope. We’re to seal the opening…”

  Eos broke into a smile. She nudged Iris, who was staring openly — with, was that dismay? — as the men dropped their weapons and rushed to action.

  “Ready to go, bug?”

  “We’re just going to leave?”

  “Oh, I think they already have more trouble on their hands than they bargained for,” Eos said. “Same as you. Let’s go. I’m sure your mother will be very unhappy to have you in any more crossfire.”

  Eos grabbed hold of a nearby rope, testing its weight. An arm reached over her hand — cracked, yellowed nails and spotted hands. Eos stopped.

  “Where are you going?” Yatpan’s voice was strained. Ah, after everything he did to save her life. Eos covered his hand with hers, and gently pulled him away.

  “As above, so below,” Eos said. She climbed onto the bannister. Iris, not to be outdone, scrambled to do the same. “While you save your castle in the sky, I will be saving your crew.”

  “Saving? You can’t,” said Yatpan. Eos turned back to look at him, questioning. “You’ll be killed. Our ship — our losses from the fire, with our Despoina — we’re already dead. Send the girl back and go back to wherever you came from.”

  If only I could. But Yatpan looked too desperate for her to give such a snarky reply. She must have made a face — one of pity, perhaps, but it was too much for him to bear. Yatpan saw her gaze and looked away. “You saved my life. You’re young. I can at least tell you not to throw yours away for dust.”

  Eos bent down to his level, rope fluttering in the sky. She put her hand on his shoulder.

  “You are not dust,” she said. “You are a man. You came here with your brothers and the dream that you will be allowed home, once you have enough to provide. You’ve fought and suffered for this dream. Let me take some of the burden off of you.” Eos squeezed his shoulder. “I know how heavy it weighs.”

  The man’s soot-ridden skin shook under her touch, and he watched her with wide eyes as she balanced onto the edge of the railing.

  And Eos jumped.